My sound studies have continued, albeit in a different form. I have taken small breaks from production and have moved more into reading, studying, and also having panic thoughts about the pandemic...
I’ve also still been grappling with my previous project, “In Pursuit of Black Noise,” as it has been featured in a couple of online exhibitions. It’s so strange now having that project be in the world knowing it is fully unfinished and maybe I will never finished its current form (although I am in the process of writing a zine or experimental essay to go along with it)!
Even stranger that it was brought up in proximity to Tyler Mitchell’s “Black Nonsense” project, probably because the use of the word “noise.” The review and comparison wasn’t negative but I did feel implicated in a sort of argument about words to which I have less of an opinion on.
And it all reminded me that Noise has a negative connotation (and rightfully so). It also reminded me that I’m often expected to have answers to the point where I stubbornly announce that I am unconcerned with providing answers, whether that be true or not.
The real issue is in the need to be both true and fixed (in meaning and comprehension).
Sound is none of these things, which is why I’ve gravitated toward it. What is true about sound is that it always exists, it is constant in that matter. But beyond that it becomes rather unstable.
The more I tap into myself and try to understand this world around me, the more I see how unstable it is. Race, Gender, Space, Time are all unraveling. I put all those things in capital because I’m referring to the White Supremacist projects of Race, Gender, etc. We feel it in our body even if we choose to ignore. We feel it in our body even if we try to apply order through language. And yet it all feels very unstable.
This instability is the space where I’d like to focus. That and projections, the way we try to construct meaning, to our material world.
Tina Campt talks about the haptic experience of sound and how it touches us. In order to hear and experience sound, we must be touched by it. It must grace our body. Sometimes it’s a delicate rumble, sometimes its nauseauting, someteimes its ephereal, sometimes its violent. Be it a whisper, the fireworks that felt like they would never end, or the sonic weapons used by cops during the Black Lives Matter protests. There are also sounds that we do not hear through our ears but still impact our bodies.
Moving toward noise, it was often used as a descriptor to mark the sounds from black people as unintelligible, lacking, inferior, ugly. The word being used to contrast music and sound. Noise often defied being put into the format of a traditional score or sheet music and if it couldn’t be written then it couldn’t be verified and it couldn’t receive things like royalties and copyright protection. Noise. I have also read about noise being associated with lower class. Being forced to be in environments where there is constant noise and no protection from it. Noise. But regardless of how it has been theorized or talked about, what feels clear is that noise transcends boundaries and maybe even destroys them. Noise fills up space and demands attention, whether you like it or not. Noise prioritizes a sensory experience. You can try tot project onto it but your projections may return nothing concrete or useful. Noise forces you to feel and reckon with your body. This is the space where I’d like you join me. This is my pursuit.